Last week, I blogged about WV’s treasurer, Riley Moore, who obviously loves publicity. (Note how many times he ends up in the news for just doing his job. Compare that to his predecessor.) Here’s an update.
Boycotting banks
Riley Moore is an Ogden favorite and so we’re not going to see any criticism of him or his ideas there. However, other state newspapers do not necessarily feature the “welder” turned treasurer as positively as our local papers do. On Riley’s actions against the lending policies of big banks, here’s a Saturday Morgantown Dominion-Post editorial:
OPINION: Right now, Treasurer Riley Moore is willing to cut off the state’s nose with the boycott. He is happy to waste taxpayer dollars in pursuit of political posturing, but West Virginians will suffer when their communities get less bang for their buckhttps://t.co/ZQPh3gpYqk
— The Dominion Post (@DominionPostWV) July 23, 2022
The editorial compares Riley’s plan to what Texas has done:
Texas passed an identical fossil fuel boycott bill, but before that, it passed into law a prohibition against investing with banks that refused to fund firearm manufacturers. Just from that law, Texas lost the business of five major banks that chose to stand by their pledges, including JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.
The result? Texas taxpayers paid an extra $300 million to $500 million in increased interest rates on funds borrowed for state and municipal projects in eight months after the law took effect. The study, written by a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Federal Reserve System's board of governors, estimates Texas will pay an average $445 million more in interest rates annually going forward.
What happened? By kicking out five major banks—which tended to underwrite the state's largest loans—Texas decreased competition for loan bids. The remaining financial institutions were smaller, so now one large project had to be financed with smaller loans or bonds from more banks with each gaining its own interest. Plus, the remaining banks now had the room to demand higher interest rates.
Finally, a newspaper willing to criticize our grandstanding state treasurer.
Tossing around statistics
On Thursday, Riley Moore tweeted about the where we get our electricity:
Here’s your current electrical grid status America 🇺🇸. You can thank COAL for powering your AC 🥶and everything in between.
— Riley Moore (@RileyMooreWV) July 21, 2022
You’re welcome!
Sincerely,
West Virginia pic.twitter.com/4Ba3TUm3WO
Of course, Moore provides no explanation for what he posted. What are we looking at? Is it a moment in time? A compilation of data? Is it for West Virginia? The Mid-Atlantic? The entire country? Among the commenters was Sean O’Leary, who is senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute:
@RileyMooreWV's tweet is badly misleading because it reflects a momentary snapshot of the fuel mix, not of America as he implies, but of only about 1/5th of the nation. This was America's fuel mix in 2021. pic.twitter.com/IwAiiWcU8a
— Sean O'Leary (@seanholeary1) July 22, 2022
As the reality of climate change becomes more real seemingly every day, it never ceases to amaze me how the Riley Moore’s of the world can ignore everything around them in servicing their political agenda.
Becoming a Heritage Foundation favorite
Last week’s post on Moore mentioned the glowing approval of Moore by Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation. Roberts is again praising Moore – this time for Fox News. From earlier today:
"I would like for Americans, as [Moore] pointed out, who have begun to equate ESG with environmental stewardship, to know that they are not at all the same thing – and that we can be morally upright stewards of nature; of what God has given us; and realize that ESG actually gets in the way of humans flourishing," Roberts concluded.
Why is Roberts and the Heritage Foundation specifically pushing Moore?
